No âHow to Ditch Your Fairyâ? Sad.
No House of Stairs or Singularity or even Interstellar Pig? Surely there should be some respect for the late William Sleator.
No âLost in the Barrensâ? No respect for Farley Mowat
What differentiates a âyoung adultâ book from an âadultâ book? 'Cause itâs really hard to find the common thread between The Hunger Games, On the Road, and Sandman. I also see that the list includes the requisite ironic option, Twilight, which barely qualifies as a book at all.
The list seems pretty heavily weighted towards things that have come out in the last half-dozen years; they may be popular, but are they reading material that will be remembered, or supplanted?
Much more than those, in what sense is Maus a young adult book? Just because it has pictures? Itâs about Auschwitz, for Godâs sake!
I think it is an invaluable resource for helping people teenaged and older understand the holocaust and some of the major post WWII psychological hardship in the jewish identity.
I agree, but I think of âyoung adultâ as meaning books specifically for teens. If itâs just books teens could benefit from, well thatâs most books, except the subversive ones.
Amazon defines it as âBooks to love from fourteen to fortyâ â so 1) they should have asked you first and 2) I am too old to love these books.
According to Stephen Colbert itâs âa regular novel that people actually read.â
This is definitely the first time âHerman Woukâ and âyoung adultâ have been mentioned together.
Also, the inclusion of Go Ask Alice and omission of Madeleine LâEngle is nothing short of a travesty.
It was once explained to me as âcoming of ageâ books. But even that doesnât seem to cover everything. The whole adult/young-adult difference seems impossibly vague and undefined 
They really should have left that open-ended, and, I think, started at twelve or thirteen. Maybe thatâs just a sign of my age that kids seem to be starting puberty younger every year. But Iâm well past forty and still every few years reread my battered copy of The Wonderful Flight To The Mushroom Planet becauseâŚwell, a mushroom planet should be reason enough.
Iâve always considered it a matter of marketing - itâs âyoung adultâ if you want to sell it to young adults. I guess thatâs a fairly recent thing, so it doesnât really work for classic literature. Maybe they just require that there are enough kids/teens in prominent roles.
In that case, I look forward to seeing Fifty Shades of Grey in the childrenâs section of my local library.
I used to think that Newbery winners were a pretty good standard for choosing childrenâs literature (the YA equivalent is the Prinz award, but that hasnât got nearly as extensive a track record). Then I started rereading the list, and itâs all fairly subjective, depending on then-current tastes and trends. Any of these lists will have winners and clinkers in it.
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